“Fortunately, it has commanded less attention than was
anticipated, and has encountered silence in some quarters,
and positive disapproval in others, usually disposed to judge
speeches of this class with the utmost forbearance. Even the
_Tribune_, while it has published the speech in its editions
intended mainly for the country, has not deemed it judicious
or wise to give it circulation among its city readers; and
some of the most decided Republican papers in the country
have protested against the injustice of holding the party
responsible for its sentiments.”
The _New York Herald_ took advantage of the speech to hold up the
consequences of “Black Republicanism.” On the day after the delivery,
it wrote thus:--
“_Important from Washington.--The Great Republican
Manifesto.--Opening of the Campaign in Earnest.--Charles
Sumner’s Inflammatory Harangue in the Senate.--Appeal to
the North against the South.--The Fivefold Wrong of Human
Slavery.--Its Total Abolition in the United States the
Sacred Duty of the Republican Party.--The Helper and Spooner
Programmes fully and emphatically indorsed.--Mr. Sumner the
Leading Light of the Black Republicans._
“We give elsewhere, to-day, in full, the speech of Senator
Sumner, of Massachusetts, on the great question that is
presented to the whole country for judgment in November next.
“Not only the argument it contains, but the place where it was
uttered, and the position and character of the man who uttered
it, should be taken into consideration, in measuring its
bearing upon, and relation to, what may truthfully be called
the greatest question of the present age.…
“In that Senate which has so often resounded with the sublimest
utterances of human lips and human hopes, Mr. Sumner stands
forth the personification of a great and a free State, and the
representative man of a great and powerful political party in
fifteen of the sovereign States of this Union. He possesses
the philosophical acumen of Mr. Seward, without his cautious
reserve as a politician,--the honesty of Lincoln, without the
craft of a candidate in nomination,--and literary culture,
political zeal, and the gift of eloquence, which place him in
the very foremost rank as a leader and an exponent of the Black
Republican ideas. All of these circumstances combine to give a
more deep solemnity to his words, in this grave moment of their
utterance.…
“Every man admits that our fraternal relations with the
Southern States are productive of unmixed benefit to us and
to ours; and yet Lincoln and Seward incite the North to an
‘irrepressible conflict’ with the South; and now comes another
mighty leader among the Black Republicans, and proclaims it to
be a ‘sacred animosity.’
“This is the burden of Mr. Sumner’s eloquence, and we need not
enter upon its details. But there is one characteristic of
this speech which is in perfect accordance with the policy of
the Black Republican party in the present campaign. The bloody
and terrible results which must ensue, if that party succeeds
in getting possession of the Federal Government, are kept
carefully out of view. John Brown’s practice is taught, but
there is no word of John Brown. The social condition of fifteen
populous, rich, and powerful States is to be revolutionized;
but not a hint of the possibility of resistance on their
part, or of the reactive effect of such resistance upon the
aggressive North, is dropped.”